{"id":170994,"date":"2020-10-26T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2020-10-26T12:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=170994"},"modified":"2020-10-21T10:57:08","modified_gmt":"2020-10-21T09:57:08","slug":"evo-moraless-partys-massive-victory-is-a-rebuke-to-us-elites-who-hailed-the-coup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/10\/evo-moraless-partys-massive-victory-is-a-rebuke-to-us-elites-who-hailed-the-coup\/","title":{"rendered":"Evo Morales\u2019s Party\u2019s Massive Victory Is a Rebuke to US Elites Who Hailed the Coup"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

19 Oct 2020 – Immediately after last year\u2019s right-wing coup in Bolivia, US elites, including many liberals, celebrated or excused the putsch against Evo Morales. Yesterday\u2019s resounding electoral win for Morales\u2019s party is a rebuke to all of their bloviating nonsense \u2014 and a massive triumph for democracy in Bolivia.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Demonstrators hold flags with the face of former president Evo Morales ahead of presidential elections on October 14, 2020 in El Alto, Bolivia.
(Gaston Brito Miserocchi \/ Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

November 10, 2019 was a day of celebration in the citadels of US punditry and elite policymaking. Evo Morales was gone. The populist dragon had been slain. No longer would the \u201cpink tide\u201d stalk their imaginations.<\/p>\n

The US right, veterans of defining democracy as its opposite, hailed the coup against Morales as a popular victory. According to the Wall Street Journal<\/em>, the putsch represented a \u201cdemocratic breakout in Bolivia<\/a>.\u201d The Trump administration praised<\/a> the military for \u201cabiding by its oath to protect not just a single person, but Bolivia\u2019s constitution\u201d and confidently predicted that \u201cwe are now one step closer to a completely democratic, prosperous, and free Western Hemisphere.<\/p>\n

One of the most jubilant in the cheering crowd was Yascha Mounk \u2014 stenographer of the liberal center, doyen of populist studies. \u201cEvo Morales\u2019 resignation is not a coup,\u201d Mounk said in a Twitter missive<\/a> on November 11. \u201c[I]t is one of the few big victories democracy has won in recent years.\u201d He expanded on that bold claim in an Atlantic<\/em> article<\/a> the same day:<\/p>\n

Like many populists on both the left and the right, Morales claimed to wield power in the name of the people. But after weeks of mass protests in La Paz and other Bolivian cities, and the rapid crumbling of his support both within law enforcement and his own political party, it was his loss of legitimacy among the majority of his own countrymen that forced Morales to resign yesterday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nowhere did Mounk mention the millions pulled out of extreme poverty, the raft of public services initiated, or, perhaps most impressively, the incorporation of indigenous people \u2014 for centuries scorned and hated by the ruling elite \u2014 into Bolivian politics as equal members. These, apparently, were incidental to the health of the country\u2019s democracy. Morales, you see, was just like the right-winger Jair Bolsonaro (himself the beneficiary of a coup carried out against a pink-tide party that, in Mounk\u2019s mind, was probably also a populist excrescence).<\/p>\n

Nor did a couple weeks\u2019 hindsight cause Mounk to change his tune. In a November 26 article, Mounk argued<\/a> that Morales was trying to \u201cincite civil war,\u201d denounced right and left \u201cpopulists\u201d as different varieties of the same anti-democratic beast, and insisted that Morales\u2019s removal was a boon for democracy. \u201cThe latest developments in La Paz should, whatever their result, inspire fear in the hearts of the world\u2019s populist dictators.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere in the precincts of elite centrist and center-left opinion, handwringing and both-sides apologetics prevailed. The Washington Post<\/em> editorial board acknowledged<\/a> Morales\u2019s successes while blaming him for the \u201canarchy\u201d that had engulfed the country, and the New York Times<\/em> editorial board<\/a>, while declining to celebrate the coup, nevertheless solemnly concluded that Morales had to be deposed.<\/p>\n

The forced ouster of an elected leader is by definition a setback to democracy, and so a moment of risk. But when a leader resorts to brazenly abusing the power and institutions put in his care by the electorate, as President Evo Morales did in Bolivia, it is he who sheds his legitimacy, and forcing him out often becomes the only remaining option.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All of this is worth remembering in light of what happened yesterday: Luis Arce, the presidential candidate for Morales\u2019s MAS party, won 52 percent of the vote according to preliminary results, beating his opponents so handily that Jeanine \u00c1\u00f1ez, the leader of the right-wing coup government, was forced to concede defeat.<\/p>\n

MAS\u2019s crushing victory, if I can borrow a phrase from Mounk, is \u201cone of the few big victories democracy has won in recent years.\u201d Over the past year, \u00c1\u00f1ez\u2019s government has persecuted<\/a> MAS supporters and repeatedly pushed back elections. The US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) doggedly<\/a> circulated the lie that Morales had engaged in election fraud. The Bolivian far right \u2014 an amalgamation of anti-indigenous racists and pro-business potentates \u2014 was given time to regroup and wrest back power.<\/p>\n

They all failed. Bolivian workers and indigenous people braved the repression and restored democracy to the country.<\/p>\n

Sunday\u2019s election result is a rebuke to the coup-makers and right-wingers, to the Washington establishment and Western opponents of leftist governments, to the pundits and thinkers who equate democracy with liberal capitalism and excoriate deviations from that orthodoxy as populist hysteria.<\/p>\n

And as for Yascha Mounk? We\u2019ll have to wait with bated breath for his opinion. His pen and his Twitter account have gone conspicuously silent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Shawn Gude is <\/em>Jacobin<\/cite>‘s associate editor.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – jacobinmag.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

19 Oct 2020 – Immediately after last year\u2019s right-wing coup in Bolivia, US elites, including many liberals, celebrated or excused the putsch against Evo Morales. Yesterday\u2019s resounding electoral win for Morales\u2019s party is a rebuke to all of their bloviating nonsense \u2014 and a massive triumph for democracy in Bolivia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":170995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1140,1607,232,120,354,1085,267,1126,487,1050,866,541,1625,780,551,109,287,103,329,70,126],"class_list":["post-170994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-bolivia","tag-bolivian-coup","tag-capitalism","tag-conflict","tag-economics","tag-evo-morales","tag-geopolitics","tag-hegemony","tag-human-rights","tag-imperialism","tag-indigenous-rights","tag-latin-america-caribbean","tag-lithium","tag-military-intervention","tag-neocolonialism","tag-politics","tag-power","tag-racism","tag-resources","tag-usa","tag-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}